“The Financial Jigsaw” has been serialised here and now is replaced by this weekly “Letter from Great Britain.”
NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected]. Also a hardcopy of the book, “The Financial Jigsaw” is available priced at £25 GBP plus P&P in A4, workbook format, bound with clear plastic covers, printed locally on demand.
I am starting the week as we witness an open revolt by the mayors and councils in Northern England. This is the first shot across the bows of the London-orientated central government led by Boris and his team of misfits. Boris will be launching a whole new set of lockdown rules on Monday – more on this below. In the meantime, our gallant local authorities, at least in the north where the lockdowns are hitting businesses hard, are challenging the very root of our dysfunctional central government decisions about how to deal with this pesky non-lethal virus.
“The mayors criticised the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, expressing their support for the accusation by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, [who said] that Boris Johnson had presided over “serial incompetence”.
“There’s no perfect response and I don’t envy the government,” said [mayor] Burnham. “But things being briefed to newspapers or issued late at night without explanation or detail … That is incompetence in my view, and it’s serial because it keeps happening.”
Dan Jarvis, the Labour MP and Sheffield city region combined authority mayor, described the government response as a “top-down, overly centralised approach that has not been as effective as it could have been”.
He said “frustrations bubbled over this week” when local leaders found out about the new measures through newspaper reports, rather than policy consultations. “We are part of the solution and need to be involved at an early point in the government decision-making process,” he said.
Push-back is continuing with the government under legal attack from the hospitality industry. “Ministers are planning to outline a new three-tiered system of restrictions, with measures expected to force pubs and restaurants to shut across the north of England.
But lawyers for the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), the British Beer and Pub Association and two of the country’s biggest brewers and pub operators, JW Lees and Joseph Holt, alongside another 10 organisations, are to challenge the latest round of coronavirus restrictions affecting the hospitality and entertainment industry.
Industry leaders argue the restrictions, which have already had a significant impact on pubs, bars, restaurants and other hospitality venues across the country, are not based on any “tangible scientific evidence” that closing venues suppresses transmission of coronavirus.”
The BIG NEWS on Monday was the promised launch of a new government strategy to deal with increasing ‘cases’ of COVID especially in the North of England. But Manchester particularly is having none of it and refuses to knuckle down under the government’s dictates.
“The prime minister unveiled a three-tier system splitting England into medium risk (tier 1), high risk (tier 2) and very high risk (tier 3) areas. Under the new rules, nearly a third of the country – more than 17 million people – face localised curbs.
Liverpool city region was the only area categorised as very high risk on Monday – with pubs forced to close and household mixing banned in almost all circumstances from Wednesday for at least four weeks.
Greater Manchester and the north-east resisted attempts to close their hospitality sectors, insisting that ministers had not provided scientific evidence and saying the measures were proving counterproductive.”
The official documents dated 21 September also called for a ban on household mixing in homes; the closure of all bars, restaurants, cafes, indoor gyms and services such as hairdressers; and all university and college teaching to be online “unless absolutely essential”. Only one of the five Sage proposals has been introduced nationally – an exhortation for people to work from home if they can.
In the Liverpool city region, pubs and bars must close unless they are food-based and serve alcohol only with meals. Restaurants can stay open. Gyms, leisure centres, casinos, betting shops and adult gaming shops will close, although this is not -stipulated for all tier 3 lockdowns.”
“So, Six months on with countless broken promises on testing targets, including the deranged Operation Moonshot, and a track-and-trace system clearly unfit for purpose, Boris Johnson was back in the Commons to announce a new plan for the country. Only this one came with no end in sight. There was no glimmer of hope; just an exhortation to keep aimlessly buggering on. The only upside was that if you did get Covid-19 then you were less likely to die of it than before as hospitals had become better at treating it; unless the hospitals got completely overloaded. Then it was back to as you were.”
Dear old ‘BoJo’ is failing in his own advice that politicians ‘should follow the science’. Thousands of qualified scientists have signed a declaration calling for an end to the lockdowns. This is particularly relevant for UK now that he is instituting even more severe restrictions in the coming days.
“The Great Barrington Declaration, released last week by scientists who argue that most of us should return to our pre-COVID ways of life, has generated a lot of attention and controversy. The declaration is spearheaded by some heavy hitters in the scientific community including Martin Kulldorff, PhD, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta, PhD, an epidemiologist at Oxford University, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, a public health policy expert who focuses on infectious diseases and who is a professor at Stanford University.
The declaration states that growing knowledge about COVID-19 includes the facts that older and infirmed people have a “thousand-fold” higher increase of dying from it than the young. “Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza,” the declaration states. As might be expected, push-back against the declaration was immediate and fierce.
A group of experts—who also brandish impressive credentials—published a response that challenges many of the declaration’s premises. For instance, Rupert Beale, PhD, of the Francis Crick Institute, said that herd immunity depends on the wide distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, which has yet to be developed. Nonetheless, the basic premise of the declaration, which states that the lockdowns do more harm than good resonates with many.”
AND – more to the point even the WHO have now come out against lockdowns. “The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO has basically confirmed an IFR of 0.14%, approximately the same as the seasonal flu.
And here are the latest survival rate estimates from the Center for Disease Control:
Age 0-19 … 99.997%
Age 20-49 … 99.98%
Age 50-69 … 99.5%
Age 70+ … 94.6%
The “science” argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over so-called “cases” (which now includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example, in this segment on ARD, one of the big mainstream German TV channels. And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria.” Read more:
https://consentfactory.org/2020/10/13/the-covidian-cult/
UPDATE: There has been no resolution of the ‘Northern Revolt’ at the time of writing so expect fireworks next week which could involve a total lockdown of the whole country as the government squirms to justify its regional actions.
Britain’s unemployment numbers are getting worse and the winter months will be a testing time for when we hit bottom which I predicted to be around 20% jobless. The UK’s flexible workforce has meant the first wave of job cuts have tended to be concentrated among the self-employed, part-time workers and temporary staff.
Overall employment has fallen by 480,000 since the start of the year, with 16- to 24-year-olds accounting for 60% of the decline as the pandemic strikes a heavy blow for a generation of young people whose lives have been disrupted by the global health emergency.
The overall fall in employment of 153,000 between June and August masks a particularly big fall in self-employment (down 240,000), with part-time workers (down 202,000) and temp employees (down 34,000) also badly hit. Not surprisingly, as in most recessions, younger people are also being relatively adversely affected, the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is already now at 13.4%,
Companies are signalling that redundancies will peak at a higher level than in the 2008 financial crisis, as growing numbers of companies shed jobs in response to the economic shock, analysts warned unemployment would continue to climb during the second wave of Covid-19.
Nye Cominetti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation think-tank, said: “With economic support falling just as lockdown restrictions increase across the country, we should prepare for a major increase in unemployment over the coming months.”
Even the politicians are becoming despondent. Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, said: “More people are going to lose their jobs until the government gets a grip. The chancellor’s chaotic habit of trying to fix problems of his own making at the last possible minute risks unemployment spiralling to levels we haven’t seen in decades.”
Here are some live examples of the suffering unemployment causes – this could break a generation. UK’s unemployed young people tell of their despair:
Saskia Harper has been struggling to find a job since being made redundant in June from her role as a magazine journalist. So far she has had no interviews, only rejections. “I went into the process with a really positive mind-set but now the job hunt has become physically draining,” she said. “It’s also affecting my mental health: the stress of running out of money, applying for benefits and feeling unproductive.
Jack Warhurst, 19, has been looking for a job in hospitality since April after he was let go after six months working for a hotel, providing room service. However, there have been scant opportunities. “There’s not really anything going round here,” he said. “I’m not sure what to do so I’m just waiting for it to blow over.” He has been receiving £340 a month in universal credit, “which is not enough to live off”, while working through his small savings.
Isabel Rodger returned home to Manchester in August after six months of trying to find work in Australia, and has still not been able to find a job. “While I was there I was interviewed for some admin roles,” said the 24-year-old. “Employers said they wanted to hire me but couldn’t because of a potential lockdown. Once it happened I really struggled.” Despite experience working in restaurants and bars she has found job hunting in Manchester “pretty disheartening”, and has been rejected about 15 times.
Olivia Mulvahill, a 23-year-old TV production researcher, became unemployed for the second time during the coronavirus crisis earlier this month. She believes the pandemic is going to force many young people to give up on their dream careers, ahead of Brexit: “Not wanting to sound too dramatic, but I don’t think the United Kingdom is the most promising place to be a young person right now.” Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/13/uk-unemployed-young-people-tell-of-despair
Now that UK has left EUROPE I will comment on relevant EU – UK events as they arise:
No further progress yet in negotiations with the EU but expect an update after the EU summit this week. “BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson will decide whether to proceed with negotiations on a post-Brexit trade deal after the upcoming European Union summit, and his decision cannot be prejudged, a British spokesperson said on Wednesday. “He (Johnson) will need to take a decision on next steps following the European Council in the light of his conversation with President von der Leyen, and on advice from his negotiating team,” the spokesperson said. “We cannot prejudge that decision.” “There are still differences, with fisheries being the starkest. We need to get substance settled and not having a common text to work from has made progress doubly difficult.”
“At a summit in Brussels, the EU proposed a further “two to three weeks” of negotiations but Europe’s heads of state and government offered Johnson little succour, demanding that he alone needed to “make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible”.
Lord Ricketts points out that the UK is already at a historic turning point. “Put together Brexit, the return of muscular nationalism and the pandemic, you have an extraordinarily important moment, probably the biggest strategic moment facing the UK since the war. The US election only adds to that.”
Yet if Trump wins, Johnson can reassure his party that rule-breaking populists still have a winning appeal for those who feel betrayed by mainstream politics. What have been described as “counter-order movements” will have shown they have not run out of steam.
To be continued next week.
Thanks for the article Austrian Peter.
I always look forward to reading your weekly report.
Interesting times we live in.
Many thanks Saami Jim, it is always gratifying to know that my scribbles are enjoyed and I hope that UK experiences puts your own situation into perspective. 🙂
Seems like they will get UBI so they can sit in their homes as prisoners until the Gov. lets them go free. Prisoners. The U.S. is sounding like it will go this way also.
Yep, you got it Yahsure, we will have 6million + sitting on their arses viewing Netflix and supping their warm British ale while the UBI rolls in and they have no need to think about anything else – heaven!
Bread & Circuses – it keeps the plebs comatose whilst the elites go on playing their games. Sad place we have arrived at and it’s dark, grey, cold and lights out at 4pm come Halloween.
Keep the UK updates coming!
Many thanks Behop, much appreciate your support – it makes it all worthwhile. As long as my pen is at hand I shall do as you say! 🙂
Is this the first time in history the healthy have been quarantined?
I think you are right Henry Ford – good question. I have Googled and this is the result:
“The practice of quarantine—the separation of the diseased from the healthy—has been around a long time. As early as the writing of the Old Testament, for instance, rules existed for isolating lepers. It wasn’t until the Black Death of the 14th century, however, that Venice established the first formal system of quarantine, requiring ships to lay at anchor for 40 days before landing. (“Quarantine” comes from the Latin for forty.)”
Its says “the separation of the diseased from the healthy” – Mmmmm – guess this lot have got it wrong – again!:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/short-history-of-quarantine/
Where are the likes of Boudicca, Oliver Cromwell, Guy Fawkes, and Enoch Powell when they are so desperately needed.
Ah, Auntie, your choice of relevant songs is exquisite – where indeed are our favorite revolutionaries? My particular favourite is Enoch Powell – a great thinker and very prescient to our current times when he warned of the mess we now find ourselves in.
I thought that the ‘warrior’ Boris was our preferred leader in 2019 but I was wrong – he is just another ‘has-been’ hoping to caste his epitaph at the foot of our unrivaled leader Winston Churchill. He is wrong on all counts – a plastic copy of the great man.
Outstanding video, Peter. Most appropriate indeed.